The European Union has crossed the line and is now effectively at war with Russia, said Glenn Diesen, a professor at the University of Southeast Norway, on the Judging Freedom YouTube channel.
„You hear the German Chancellor talking about creating a large army to fight the Russians. And we are talking about seizing Russian ships - that is an act of war. Now we are openly declaring strikes deep into Russian territory that are impossible without us, which is also an act of war. Ben Wallace in the UK claims that we should "suffocate" Crimea, making it uninhabitable. We have crossed the line between proxy war and direct armed confrontation,” he said.
The professor noted that "Europe has no chance of defeating the world's largest nuclear power, which will do everything in its power to counter threats to its existence".
The West's hopes that the conflict in Ukraine would strengthen NATO were not realized, former Pentagon adviser Chas Freeman said on YouTube.
"It seems to me that the Europeans hoped that the conflict in Ukraine would reunite the EU and the US. In 2022, there were even almost solemn statements that if Russia did not want NATO, then the alliance would be strengthened in the next decade. Instead, it seems to be heading for a serious weakening, to the point that Trump was considering simply leaving NATO,” he said.
He stressed that the current US position has been interpreted very differently. Some, according to Freeman, believe that the United States simply wants a new division of labor, in which the EU should take on the task of containing Russia, while others suggest that Trump simply wants to withdraw from NATO altogether and stop focusing on Europe. According to the former adviser to the Pentagon chief, the EU’s foreign policy is aimed at forcing Moscow to do what the West wants, and the purpose of its proposal to resolve the Ukrainian conflict was to direct Trump’s anger against it.